The Unseen Bridgegroom eBook

He bowed and left her, passing into another room,
and closing the door.

All in an agitated flutter, Mollie opened her door
and entered. But on the threshold she paused,
with a shrill cry of wonder, terror, and doubt; for
the padded walls and floor, the blind windows, the
lighted lamp, the bed, the furniture, were all recognized
in a moment.

It was the room where she had been first imprisoned—­where
she had consented to marry the masked man.

A quiet figure rose from a chair under the lamp and
faced her with a courtesy. It was the girl who
had lured her from her home—­Sarah Grant.

“Come in, miss,” said this young person,
as though they had just parted an hour ago. “Master
told me to expect you. Sit down; he’ll be
here in a minute. You look fit to drop.”

She felt “fit to drop.” She sunk
into the proffered seat, trembling through every limb
in her body, overwhelmed with a stunning consciousness
that the supreme moment of her life had come.

Sarah Grant left the room, and Mollie was alone.
Her eyes turned to the door, and fixed themselves
there as if fascinated. Her head was awhirl—­her
mind a blank. Something tremendous was about to
happen—­what, she could not think.

The door opened slowly—­the man in the black
mask strode in and stood, silent and awful, before
her.

Without a word or cry, but white as death, she rose
up and confronted him with wild, dilated eyes.

“Yes,” Mollie answered, her white lips
scarce able to form the words. “For God’s
sake, take off that mask and show me your face!”

Without a word, he unclasped the cloak and let it
slip on the floor; he removed the flowing hair and
beard, and with it the mask. And uttering a low,
wailing cry, Mollie staggered back—­for there
before her, pale as herself, stood the man she loved—­Hugh
Ingelow!

CHAPTER XXIX.

WHICH WINDS UP THE BUSINESS.

He stood before her, pale and stern, his eyes fixed
upon her, as a culprit before his judge waiting sentence
of death.

But Mollie never looked. After that one brief,
irrepressible cry, she had fallen back, her face bowed
and hidden in her hands.

“You shrink from me, Mollie,” Hugh Ingelow
said; “you will not even look at me. I
knew it would be so. I know I deserve it; but
if I were never to see you again, I must tell you
the truth all the same. Yes, Mollie, recoil from
me, hate me, spurn me, for the base, unmanly part I
have acted. It is not Doctor Oleander who is
the dastard, the villain, the abductor of weak women—­it
is I!”

She did not speak, she did not move, she made no sign
that she even heard him.

“It will avail me little, I know,” he
continued, “to tell you I have repented the
dastardly deed in bitterness of spirit since.
It will avail nothing to tell you how I have hated
myself for that cruel and cowardly act that made me
your husband. I think you maddened me, Mollie,
with your heartless, your insulting rejection, and
I did love you passionately. I swore, in my heart
of hearts, I would be avenged, and, Mollie, you know
how I kept my vow.”